Politics of Alberta
The politics of Alberta are centred on a provincial government resembling that of the other Canadian provinces, namely a constitutional monarchy and parliamentary democracy. The capital of the province is Edmonton, where the provincial Legislative Building is located.
The unicameral legislature, the Alberta Legislature, is composed of the Lieutenant Governor and the Legislative Assembly, which has 87 members. Government is conducted after the Westminster model.
Alberta has a single-tier system of municipal government similar to that of most of the other provinces.
Lieutenant governor
, of Canada, is also the sovereign for Alberta's provincial jurisdiction. Within Canada, the monarch exercises power individually on behalf of the federal government, and the 10 provinces. The powers of the Crown are vested in the monarch and are exercised by the lieutenant governor.While the advice of the premier and Executive Council is typically binding on the lieutenant governor, there are occasions when the lieutenant governor has refused advice. This usually occurs if the premier does not clearly command the confidence of the elected Legislative Assembly, or if the advice or legislation would be unconstitutional.
In 2022, Lieutenant Governor Salma Lakhani identified the constitutional role of the lieutenant governor as the most important part of the job. She stated "We are a constitutional monarchy, and this is where we do checks and balances. I’m what I would call a ‘constitutional fire extinguisher.’ We don't have to use it a lot, but sometimes we do have to use it," in response to a proposed "Alberta Sovereignty Act" if it was determined to be unconstitutional. The proposed law would give the province the ability to ignore federal legislation it does not agree with.
Legislative power
The Legislative Assembly of Alberta is the deliberative assembly of the Alberta Legislature, and is seated at the Alberta Legislature Building in the provincial capital of Edmonton. The Legislative Assembly is a unicameral assembly of 87 members, elected first past the post from single-member electoral districts. Bills passed by the legislature are given royal assent by, King of Canada, represented by the lieutenant governor of Alberta. The current Legislature is the 31st since Alberta entered Confederation under the Alberta Act in 1905, and is composed of members elected in the May 2023 general election, and returned a majority parliament controlled by the United Conservative Party.Executive power
The day-to-day operation and activities of the Government of Alberta are performed by the provincial departments and agencies, staffed by the non-partisan public service, and directed by the elected government.The premier of Alberta is the primary minister of the Crown. The premier acts as the head of government for the province, chairs and selects the membership of the Cabinet, and advises the Crown on the exercise of executive power and much of the royal prerogative.
History of Alberta politics
Provincial
Alberta's parliamentary governments are determined by general elections held every three to five years. Five years is the maximum term allowed. By-elections are conducted between the general elections to fill seats left vacant by death or resignation. In each election a single party has taken a majority of the seats, although sometimes it does this after receiving less than half the votes cast.Alberta's politics has historically been one of long-lasting governments with government changes being few and far between.
For the first 16 years Alberta was a province it had a Liberal government. Through the 1910s the growing farmer movement forced reforms out of this government and, embodied in the United Farmers of Alberta group, it launched itself into direct politics, winning power in the first election it contested.
Louise McKinney and Roberta MacAdams were the first women elected to the Legislative Assembly, in the 1917 election. They were also the first women in any legislature of the British Empire. Irene Parlby was the first woman appointed to the provincial Cabinet, in 1921.
Alberta was swept up in the wave of "prairie populism" that took place after the First World War; from 1921 to 1935 the United Farmers of Alberta headed the longest-lived of the farmers' governments that won power in Canada during this time. It made several reforms including changing Alberta's election system. Ranked voting was brought in – single transferable voting proportional representation in the cities and instant-runoff voting outside the cities. The UFA lost all its seats in 1935 when William Aberhart's Social Credit party was elected on a radical monetary reform platform. After Aberhart's death in 1943 and changing economic conditions, the Socred government moved to the right under Premier Ernest Manning.
For over 80 years, the province was governed by right of centre parties. The Socreds were succeeded in 1971 by the Progressive Conservatives. Ralph Klein was premier of Alberta from 1992 to 2006 and despite multiple controversies, he remained the leader of the Progressive Conservative party and thus the province although only 55 percent of delegates from his party signified their approval of his leadership on the spring of 2006, pushing him into retirement. In the previous election Klein's PC party had taken less than half the votes cast in the province but had won 75 percent of the seats.
Left wing Edmonton was an exception to the province's post–Second World War conservative voting pattern, earning it the nickname "Redmonton". Edmonton city residents, to a larger extent than elsewhere, tend to vote for the Liberal Party of Alberta and Alberta New Democrats. Their preferences is often obscured by the first-past-the-post electoral system. No Labour or CCF or NDP candidate won an Edmonton seat from 1955 to 1982, despite the large left vote in the city overall, in part due to the cancellation of the STV/IRV voting systems in 1956. The 2004 provincial election was an example of how the city got its nickname "Redmonton"; Liberal and New Democrat candidates won 15 of the city's 18 seats.
While Tories won 13 of Edmonton's 18 seats in 2008, Klein's successor, Ed Stelmach, represented a riding just outside Edmonton and was perceived to be less connected to the interests of the energy corporations whose headquarters are in Calgary.
Stelmach gave way in 2011 to Alison Redford, the province's first female premier. She led the Tories to a 12th consecutive election victory in 2012. Redford was forced to resign in 2014, and was ultimately succeeded by former federal minister Jim Prentice.
The period of conservative dominance in Alberta politics was broken in 2015 when the Alberta New Democratic Party formed government for the first time, and Rachel Notley became Alberta's 17th premier. The NDP won 54 of Alberta's 87 seats.
The 2019 general election saw Jason Kenney and his new United Conservative Party sweep to power. The UCP won 63 of 87 seats in the Alberta legislature, returning the province to conservative politics. This was the only election in Alberta history to dethrone an incumbent government after only a single term. However, the UCP received just 54 percent of the vote, the first-past-the-post system inflating the avalanche of switched seats and exaggerating the appearance of the party's popularity. In the 2023 general election, the UCP won another majority but by smaller margins – UCP 49 seats, NDP 38 seats; UCP 53 percent of votes, NDP 44 percent of votes cast overall.
Federal
When first MPs were elected in what is present-day Alberta in 1880s/1890s, Calgary and southern Alberta generally elected Conservatives, such as Donald Watson Davis and north-central Alberta elected Liberals such as Frank Oliver.After province-hood, Alberta's federal representation mostly echoed that of its provincial government. Like provincial elections, federal elections again and again saw the leading party receive more than its due share of members and the other parties were under-represented.
When Liberals were in power in the Legislative Assembly, most of the province's MPs were Liberal. The 1917 election was an exception – The Union government's use of the soldier vote meant that Liberal candidates with majority support among voters voting in the riding were not declared elected.
Then when the United Farmers dominated from 1921 to 1935, most of the Alberta MPs were of that party. Calgary was a labour stronghold, and its election of two Labour MPs in 1921 was un-equalled anywhere else in the country.
When Social Credit came into vogue, winning its first electoral successes in 1935, federal representation also changed to being mostly Socred. The Social Credit party under Ernest Manning turned right-wing in the 1940s, but this apparently mirrored changing sentiment among Alberta voters. And the party maintained its power provincially and its hold on most of the federal seats until the 1970s.
Alberta's conservative leaning was pronounced on the federal level. The province was the heartland of the Reform Party of Canada and its successor, the Canadian Alliance. These parties were the second-largest political parties in the federal Parliament from 1997 to 2003 and they were located on the political right.
The Canadian Alliance merged with the Progressive Conservative Party to form today's Conservative Party of Canada. The Conservatives' former leader and ex–Prime Minister Stephen Harper, moved to Alberta in the 1980s and represented a Calgary riding; Rona Ambrose, the party's interim leader and Leader of the Opposition, is also an Albertan.
Alberta elected no Liberal MP 1958–1963, 1965–1968, 1972–1993, 2006–2015, 2019 to 2021. In 2021 it elected one in Edmonton and one in Calgary. In 2021 it received 15.5 percent of the Alberta votes so was proportionally due five seats in that province. In those years when Alberta had no Liberal MPs, Liberals were in power 1965–1968, 1972–1979, 1980–1984, 1993 to 2006 and 2019 to the present. In almost all of those five periods, for a total of 31 years, Alberta did not have direct representation in the federal cabinet. This included the years when PM Pierre Trudeau tried to create a National Energy Program. It failed. To this day, Canada is one of only a few major countries without a national energy plan.
The CCF never did elect an MP in Alberta. But under its later label, the New Democratic Party, the left has achieved more successes in Alberta, electing an MP in 1988 and one in Edmonton-Strathcona every time since 2008. In 2021 an additional NDP MP was elected in Edmonton Griesbach. The party received almost a fifth of the Alberta vote in 2021 and proportionally was due six seats.
Rural Alberta ridings typically give the leading party, whether it is the Conservatives, or the United Farmers, Social Credit, Reform and the Alliance before them, some of the highest margins in the country; in many cases, the successful candidate receives more than two-thirds of the vote.